Iceland’s contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2025 was the project Lavaforming. This exhibition tells a story of a future society that has learned to tame lava flows for the benefit of society, by using them as a sustainable building material, turning a local threat into an opportunity for creativity.
This future vision takes us to the year 2150, where we have harnessed the lava flow, as we did with geothermal energy 200 years earlier in Iceland. The main goal of this project is to show that architecture can be the force that rethinks and shapes a new future based on sustainability, innovation, and creative thinking. A lava flow can contain enough building material to supply the foundations of an entire city in a matter of weeks without erosive mining and non-renewable energy generation.
Lavaforming explores a building material that has never been used before. This is both a proposal and a metaphor – architecture is in a paradigm shift, many of our current methods have been deemed obsolete or harmful to the planet. We need to think in new ways, look at challenges and find the right resources.
Architect Arnhildur Pálmadóttir is the founder and owner of s.ap architects, which specializes in sustainability and circularity in construction, and the curator and the creative director of Lavaforming. She is renowned for her entrepreneurial attitude and interdisciplinary interest that she uses to tackle projects from various perspectives.
The exhibition team of the Venice Biennale comes from s.ap architects, an interdisciplinary research studio focusing on speculative projects of the future, along with interdisciplinary collaborators.
Lavaforming starts at Hafnarhús (Reykjavík Art Museum) on 23 January and runs until 26 April.
